


if there were dragons

by verity



Series: tween wolf [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Middle School, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-27
Updated: 2013-03-27
Packaged: 2017-12-06 16:16:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/737652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/pseuds/verity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The day before sixth grade starts, Scott gets bitten by a werewolf.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if there were dragons

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Stiles & Allison - one year after the fire](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/19215) by Hydrae. 



> Thanks to hydrae for the amazing [art & premise](http://ladyofthelog.tumblr.com/post/46401936783/agentotter-hydrae-back-at-the-end-of-s2-at) that so inspired me! Thanks also to Ashe for cheerleading and Mijra for the speedy beta. <3
> 
> Disclaimer: there are no dragons in this fic.

(1)

The day before sixth grade starts, Scott gets bitten by a werewolf.

They're out in the woods, tossing a frisbee around, and it gets late fast—it always seems fast, to Stiles, he's never on time, always surprised by the bell, the sudden dip of the sun below the horizon. He doesn't worry until Scott realizes he's lost his inhaler, and then they're hunting for it on the ground, racing against the coming dark.

"Come on, _come on_ ," Scott says, digging through rotting leaves and other detritus of the forest floor, fingers coming up black and loamy. "My mom's going to kill me, these are really expensive."

"It'll be okay," Stiles says. He doesn't have a flashlight or a cell phone, nothing that'll give them any light. "We'll find it, it can't be too far—"

The thing that bites Scott has long, white teeth.

—

"You're not going to die," Stiles says, pressing down on Scott's side. He and Scott are—were—Boy Scouts; there's a first aid merit badge his mother never sewed on drifting loose in the catch-all drawer in Stiles's kitchen. "Promise me, you're not going to—"

"I don't think I'm going to die." Scott sounds perplexed. "It—it doesn't hurt that much, actually."

There's blood all over Stiles's hands, dripping down Scott's side. "Jesus, didn't you _see_ that thing?" Stiles did. It was straight out of one of those fake documentaries they show on the Discovery Channel in the middle of the night, _if there were dragons_ , _if there were yeti_ , _if there were rabid, bloodthirsty quadrupeds in your backyard—_

"Not really," Scott says, blinking. "I was—hey, do you see my inhaler?"

"Do you want those to be your last words?" Stiles says. "Really?"

Scott pushes Stiles's hands away. "Let me look at it."

When Scott pulls up his t-shirt, there's—there's nothing. It's a scratch.

—

Stiles gets grounded before sixth grade even starts. It's totally unfair.

 

(2)

Allison Argent sits with them at lunch.

She has glossy brown hair that runs down her back in a long braid, warm brown eyes, and a really cute nose. That's how Stiles knows she's Allison Argent. Allison has math first period with Scott, Stiles has P.E. second period with Scott, and social studies third period with Scott, which gave Scott one hour of hurried whispers and another of furtively passed notes to bring Stiles up to speed.

"Hey," Allison says, putting her tray down on the table. "I hope you don't mind if I—I don't know anybody yet, but I owe Scott a pencil—"

"It's okay," Scott says, breathless. Hopefully he has his spare inhaler. "You should totally sit with us."

Stiles holds up his hand to indicate that he's also present in this conversation. "Stiles."

"Allison," she says. "Sorry, geez, I mean—"

"It's cool," Stiles says generously. "We're new here, too."

Three different elementary schools feed into Deerbrook Middle, and while Stiles recognizes a few people—he can see Lydia and Mandy over in the opposite corner of the cafeteria, by the vending machines—they're mixed up with the others, a disorienting potpourri of new faces and names. Stiles can't imagine learning them all.

(In each class this morning, he corrected his teacher during roll call. "It's Stiles," he said. "Just Stiles.")

Across the table, Allison's unzipping her lunch box, taking out a neatly wrapped sandwich and a Capri Sun, some carrot sticks in ziploc baggie, a little plastic container of dressing. "I've got cookies, too," she says. "My mom made some so I could share."

"I'm good," Stiles says.

He has a Lunchable.

 

(3)

When his mom got sick, Stiles thought a lot about magic. His grandma used to come and visit them, and she prayed a lot, and Stiles would pray with her, too. Prayer seemed like it should be its own kind of sorcery, like it should infuse his mom with some kind of golden, holy light, just by the dint of their effort, his grandma with her bent head, and Stiles with his knees pressed together, trying not jitter, trying to focus on this, just this one thing. All that happened was his mom got worse. She'd been tall, an inch taller than his dad, strong and wide-hipped and broad-shouldered. In her hospital bed she shrank, got smaller and smaller. Sometimes Stiles dreamed that instead of shrinking, the rest of the world was growing bigger around her, swallowing her up like a greedy mouth.

She stopped getting smaller, eventually, when she died.

Now Scott's a werewolf, and he's sitting on the edge of Stiles's bed, exploring his face with his hands, furry and bewildered. "Dude," he says. "Is this a dream?"

Stiles reaches over and pinches Scott until he squeals and pushes Stiles back against the headboard.

—

"We'll be detectives," Stiles says on Saturday afternoon, clipping a flashlight to his belt with a carabiner. His dad's Leatherman and a pack of matches are in his back pockets. "We'll investigate. There has to be evidence, right? Of the other werewolf?"

"I don't know." Scott looks down at his hands; they tend to sprout claws when he's nervous, so he's spent the first week of sixth grade keeping his hands in his pockets a lot. "Maybe it wasn't another werewolf. Maybe this is like Spiderman, where he got bit by a radioactive spider, and—"

" _Simplest explanation_." Stiles reaches for the doorknob.

Scott groans. "I'm a _werewolf_ , Stiles."

The clearing where they'd been throwing the frisbee didn't seem this far from Scott's house the other day, but it takes them twenty minutes to retrace their steps. There's no sign of Scott's bloodied and abandoned t-shirt or his inhaler; the leaf cover on the ground looks undisturbed. When Stiles looks up, the pine trees seem to stretch on for miles until they disappear into the sky.

"What are you doing here? This is private property," someone who is definitely not Scott says.

Stiles startles, loses his footing, and he's on his ass in the dirt looking at the sky before he can get a word out. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Scott werewolf-speed to his side, tensed, like he can protect them for anything. Maybe this is it. Maybe this is when they're going to die.

"Did you turn me into a werewolf?" Scott shouts. "That was seriously not cool, dude!"

"What?" the guy says. Stiles can see him, when he cranes his head up: he's in high school, maybe, wearing jeans and a black t-shirt that's too tight and worn at the seams. He looks familiar.

"A _werewolf_! Because if this is your property—"

"Huh," Stiles says, after the dude sprouts fur and fangs and… _runs away_.

 

(4)

On Sunday, Stiles gets started on his homework early, because his medication's for school and without it he can't _think_. If he hurries through his assignments, maybe he'll have some time to start figuring out where they were in the forest, who owns it, that kind of thing has to be on the internet somewhere. He's just finishing up with his math worksheet when Dad knocks on his door. "You got a moment, son?"

"Yeah, yeah," Stiles says, even though he's already tapping the eraser of his pencil against his desk, impatient. "What's up?"

Dad gives him a half-smile, comes far enough into the room to lean against the door frame. "Now, I know you think you're big enough to be here on your own—"

Stiles rolls his eyes. "I _am_!"

"You're eleven," his dad says flatly. "You're eleven and the Sheriff needs me back on overnights, so you're going to have a babysitter. She's going to spend the night here a few times a week, we'll see how it goes."

"Why can't I stay with Scott? We can take the bus together, his mom won't mind."

Dad shakes his head. "Melissa helps us a lot, but you and I, we've got to get used to doing this together, G—Stiles. Just the two of us."

"No," Stiles says, just to say it, because there his dad is wrong, wrong, wrong. There's no "two of us," no getting used to it, and Stiles _never_ wants to get used to it. He wants to feel the hole where his mom should be because if he doesn't, it'll be like she was never there.

"Her name is Laura," his dad continues. "She's taking classes at the community college. She's had a hard time, too. The fire last year—"

"The Hales?" Stiles sneaks a look at his dad's case files sometimes, but he didn't have to do that to hear about the fire. It was on the news; Laura's sister Kelly had been in Stiles's kindergarten class. She had a birthmark on her cheek shaped like a starfish. They had a memorial at school, and grief counselors. Stiles didn't go to any of it.

"The Hales," Dad says. "Laura's going to start on Tuesday night. Be nice to her. She's doing us a favor."

"Right," Stiles says. He stabs at his worksheet with the business end of his pencil.

—

Laura is short, petite, punctual. Stiles hates her on sight.

"You're going to be a terror, aren't you?" she says, folding her arms. They're in the kitchen, where Stiles is refusing to eat anything but bagel bites for dinner. "I have a younger brother, you know, and I have to live with him. He's 16. Let's get this straight: you are my _vacation_ , kiddo."

Stiles scowls at her. "I want bagel bites or I'm not eating anything."

"I guess you're eating nothing, then," Laura says. "Because there are no bagel bites in this freezer, and I am not going out to get them. Hopefully your dad's still going to pay me when he comes home and finds your desiccated corpse."

There's a long pause where Stiles glares up at Laura and realizes he was wrong, earlier. This isn't hate that he's feeling: it's love.

—

They order pizza. Laura smells Scott on one of Stiles's t-shirts when she's helping him sort the laundry and her eyes flash blue.

"Oh my god, you're a werewolf, too," Stiles says, amazed.

"Oh my god, now I have _three_ bratty kid brothers." Laura looks down at the shirt in her hands and sighs. "This is exactly what I wanted for Christmas."

 

(5)

On Thursday, Scott and Stiles spend most of P.E. sitting on the sidelines while Scott repeats everything that Allison told both of them at lunch yesterday. "Can you believe she's _nationally ranked_ in _archery_?" he says, moony-eyed. "Allison's amazing."

"Yeah, buddy, I know," Stiles says, patting Scott on the knee.

At lunch, Allison brings enough Gushers to share and tells them about the six months her family spent on a cattle ranch in Wyoming. One time her aunt took her out cow tipping, but her mom grounded her for three weeks so Allison isn't planning on trying that again.

In math, Stiles and Lydia have to grade each other's homework and she defaces his worksheet with red pen.

—

Stiles copied out a lunar calendar into his planner the day after Scott got bitten, and he's been crossing off the days to the next full moon with growing anticipation. He's been making plans, too; he can chain Scott to the radiator, maybe, and feed him mice like he used to feed his mom's boa constrictor, Leon. Laura thinks she'll be able to take care of Scott, though, and get her brother Derek to help, too.

They're not alone.

Maybe, just maybe, this is going to be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [ladyofthelog](http://ladyofthelog.tumblr.com) on tumblr.
> 
> ( ~~Yes, this really is the end.~~ OKAY THAT WAS APPARENTLY A TOTAL LIE.)


End file.
